The Unblessed Way
by Shade Embry
Summary: Post-midnight. What does surviving this longest day really mean, and is it enough? Jack mourns, a friend resigns, and Mason faces himself while everyone wonders ... what next?


The Unblessed Way  
  
Author: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick  
  
E-Mail: AgentThespis@msn.com  
  
Rating: PG for language  
  
Category: Angst, Drama, Missing Scene  
  
Spoilers: 11:00 PM-Midnight  
  
Summary: What does it mean to survive the longest day, and is that enough? Liz resigns, Jack mourns, and Mason looks in the mirror.  
  
Original Character Bio: Liz Rycoff is CTU's Chief of Technology. She is close friends with Jack and with George Mason, and has a political alliance with Mason, who wants her to go to work for him at District, but Liz's loyalty to Jack holds her back.  
  
Recommended Listening: "Miracle," Vertical Horizon; "It Doesn't Matter," Alison Krauss  
  
Author's Notes: Again, due to phenomenal work from Kiefer Sutherland, I couldn't pass this piece up. I hope it lends a little more closure to the season finale at the very least, and congratulate Leslie Hope for a short- lived job well done.  
  
  
  
1 It's taken much too long to get it right  
  
Could it be so wrong  
  
To maybe find someone a miracle  
  
And all you really need  
  
Is everything you could never be  
  
All you wanted was a miracle  
  
- Vertical Horizon, "Miracle"  
  
Her watch turned over to midnight and standing at her desk, having been with the team in the parking garage, Liz watched Nina Myers being lead by two CTU agents through the bullpen. Her glance quickly turned to Tony Almeida, who had been involved with Nina; Tony had his head in his hands in disbelief. Liz herself shook her head. She hadn't been friends with Nina, but she had respected Nina and turned to Nina when Jack or Mason wasn't around. She couldn't believe everything this one day had amounted to.  
  
She took off her jacket and folded it on her desk chair while she peeled off her shoulder holster with service weapon still inside.  
  
Her decision had been made up somewhere throughout the day, she didn't know exactly where, but far before midnight. The things she had seen, been a part of, watched happen shocked her, hurt her, scared her. It made her realize that no matter how tough she might seem, no matter who her friends were, a thirtysomething computer specialist from San Diego had no business working for a growing unit of the Central Intelligence Agency. She wasn't a soldier, just a hacker. She wasn't ready to fight a war, not like this.  
  
Liz knew she had to leave.  
  
She took her badge folder out of her back pocket, threw her jacket back on, and walked up the stairway to where Mason was cleaning his belongings out of Jack's office in preparation for going back to District. He looked up at her as she walked in, the light in his eyes inflamed by survival and relief quickly extinguished when he saw the dead resolve in hers.  
  
"Liz, come to see me off?" he said as she shut the door behind her.  
  
She ignored him. "George, I'm handing in my resignation," she said, laying her badge folder, holster and gun on Jack's desk. The contents of her locker and desk were already contained in the bag at her side, which Mason correctly interpreted to mean she had premeditated this, thought it through.  
  
"Are you sure about this?" he said. "CTU will need a new chief of staff, and you'd be a prime candidate. I'm sure Jack would take you on."  
  
She nodded. "I can't do this, George. I'm not a soldier, I'm not cut out for this. I need to get out of here."  
  
"You can always come to District, if you want out of CTU," he offered.  
  
But Liz shook her head. "I didn't mean just out of CTU. I meant out of the Agency."  
  
Now he was further surprised. "What would you do?"  
  
"I don't know. My younger brother works out in Silicon Valley, I phoned him and he said he could have me set up with one of the labs there." She exhaled. "Don't take this personally, George. Please don't. I just … I overestimated myself working for the CIA. I thought I was protected, not in danger because I had a desk job, reasonably safe … but all I see behind me is missed opportunities, failures and a body count.  
  
"I've updated Milo on my open dockets, he can take over for me," she assured him.  
  
Mason looked at her for a moment, but he saw in her eyes that he wasn't going to convince her to stay. He'd told her Jamey had been murdered when he found out about Nina, but it hadn't taken any less of a burden off her; it had even added more. Anything else he said would just hurt her. Instead, he nodded.  
  
"I'll call you tomorrow, make sure everything works out, okay?"  
  
"Thank you."  
  
The two of them embraced for the last time. What struck them both was that this moment – a moment of victory over the Drazens, of survival and endurance – that should have been somewhat happy was charged with pain and anguish, but they couldn't help that. It almost seemed predestined, Mason thought. There was always an undercurrent of the bad along with the good.  
  
"I'm going to miss you, Elisabeth," he told her frankly as he held her, then pulled back. She mustered a small smile. "I'll miss you, too, George," she said, heading for the door. "I've got to tell Jack," she explained.  
  
"Let me tell him," Mason said, thinking it was the last thing Jack needed to hear.  
  
But again Liz demurred. "He'd expect to hear it from me," she explained. "I think I owe that to him, to tell him."  
  
Then she was gone; Mason sat at Jack's desk and studied her badge folder, wishing it could all end differently.  
  
Liz herself walked the corridors looking for Jack, unable to find him on the bullpen floor. She figured he had walked off somewhere to be alone, or possibly to be with his family. Kim was still in the conference room, but that didn't mean he wasn't talking to Teri, and Liz didn't want to get Kim further down by telling Kim of her resignation. She wandered the corridors by ITS, knowing he had to be in there somewhere.  
  
And upon finding him against the wall, cradling an obviously dead Teri, crying and mourning, she herself sucked in a breath and dashed to his side, all thoughts of telling him this was goodbye gone. How could Teri be dead? And now she expected to take herself out of his life when one of the women he depended on was gone and the other had betrayed him? What kind of selfish thoughts were those?  
  
"Jack, let me help you," she whispered, looking at Teri's lifeless form. How could someone who had made her part of her own family, who had been there for her, and was her best friend's wife – how could someone like that be dead?  
  
Jack looked at her with eyes charged with agony. "What good would it do, Liz?  
  
"What good would it do?"  
  
-To Be Continued- 


End file.
